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Cloth painted with diluted acrylic paint and coffee.
Painting Fabric

Painting Fabric

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My local group met recently and we tried a new painting technique for fabric. It’s very simple and creates an organic look to the fabric. I didn’t manage to take any photos during the process. We watered down instant coffee and acrylic paint, really watered down. A tiny bit of paint and lots of water. Then the fabric is scrunched up and dipped into the watered down paint. After the fabric is completely soaked with paint, scrunch the fabric up again and darker paint can be added in dabs to the outside edges and over the ball of scrunched up fabric if desired. Then let the fabric dry and iron it afterwards.

Painted and scrunched up pieces of cloth on cookie sheet drying in the sun.

Here’s all the fabric I painted scrunched and drying in the sun. It took more than two days to dry. I used fabric that had already been dyed, many of which were really bright orange and I was finding difficult to use in projects. So a bit more neutralizing was needed.

Cloth painted with diluted acrylic paint and coffee.

This is a piece of cotton that was already dyed gray and then paint added on top.

Cloth painted with diluted acrylic paint and coffee.

Here’s another piece of cotton that was orange. I added diluted blue paint and then some darker paint after it was scrunched.

Cloth painted with diluted acrylic paint and coffee.

I think this piece was white to start and the paint made the pattern and color.

Cloth painted with diluted acrylic paint and coffee.

This was medical gauze that Paula gave us. I think it will work for nuno felting, so you will probably see it again in the future.

Cloth painted with diluted acrylic paint and coffee.

These two were previously dyed cheesecloth (again orange) and then diluted paint added over the top.

Cloth painted with diluted acrylic paint and coffee.

I’m fairly certain this is silk gauze with dye and paint added. Again, another candidate for nuno felting.

Cloth painted with diluted acrylic paint and coffee.

The fossil print on this piece of fabric was done years ago. I designed the silk screen and printed a variety of fossils. Now this trilobite has a bit moodier background. More layers?

Cloth painted with diluted acrylic paint and coffee.

This piece of silk gauze started white and then had diluted paint and coffee added. I will be interested to see if the coffee holds its color with felting. I thought this might be an interesting start to a landscape.

We’re supposed to be using these fabrics for our fabric book (our year long project) but I’m not making much progress in that direction. I have three pages complete but I’m not really happy with the result. One of those projects where I’m in the middle, discouraged and can’t imagine that it’s going to end well. Hopefully, I will be inspired by these new fabric choices to use.

Orange, yellow and brown painted fabric
Painting Fabric

Painting Fabric

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Our local group meeting in November was all about painting fabric. We are still working on background fabrics that will be included in our fabric books. We used a variety of “fabric” paints that are heat set.

Table with painting supplies, tools and several pieces of painted fabric.

Louise had cut up a bunch of different types of fabric to paint on and had a wide arrary of paints.

The idea was to spray water on to the fabric, then add paint and then you could if you wanted, add another piece of fabric on top to pick up extra paint. The photos above show a piece of sheer fabric that was painted, then a piece of cotton velveteen was added on top. The final photo on the right shows the velveteen after all the paint colors were added. This is Sally’s fabric.

Paula was working in shades of brown. These fabrics are all still wet, so it will be interesting to see what they look like dry.

I was working in fall colors. When you see the black printing, those are fabrics that we screen printed years ago that Louise still had in her stash.

Three pieces of painted and printed fabric.

These are a few of Louise’s painted pieces.

Blue, red and printed fabric

And one more photo of one of Sally’s painted fabrics. We left the fabric at Louise’s house to dry and then everything will need to be ironed. Next month, we have plans to do some fabric weaving for a book page.